Brazil’s biggest city is experiencing a critical water shortage less than a month before the opening game of the 2014 FIFA World Cup is to be played in Sao Paulo on 12 June, following one of the driest summers on record.  As hundreds of thousands of football fans descend on the city, the reservoir that serves it at less than 10 percent of capacity.

Officials are considering penalties on customers who use too much water during the crisis.  People in the poor favelas on the outskirts of Sao Paulo say no one is bothering to ask them to conserve – their water supply is regularly shut down.

“Every night, from around 9 PM until 5 AM, they switch off the water.  This has been going on for three months,” said Rosali Junqueira, who lives in Casa Verde, North Sao Paulo.

“In my house there is a lack of water every weekend,” said Alexandra Machado in Jardim Angela, in the far south of the city.  “They are rationing.  We go without water for three, four days.”

The Sabesp water company says its Cantareira reservoir system was at just 8.6 percent of its capacity as of 13 May.  And local prosecutors are investigating claims that the crisis could have been avoided if the water company hadn’t backed itself into a corner with its reliance on a single reservoir system for a city of more than 9 million people.

“There are a series of investments that if they had been done would have reduced the dependence on the Cantareira system,” said prosecutor Ivan Castanheiro.  “This has already been an ecological disaster,” he said, referring to the 20 tons of fish killed off because the Piracicaba River is running low.

Sabesp is blaming the water shortage on the driest summer since 1930.  The company says, “The rain rate for the months of December, January and February was well below the lowest recorded in 84 years, when measurement began.”